Hiring candidates from overseas can be a costly endeavour. For HR and compliance leaders, the hiring process requires a significant amount of planning, coordination, and effort for organisations in Singapore, who must also comply with specific Ministry of Manpower (MOM) requirements. With a candidate’s eventual employment in Singapore riding entirely on successful MOM verification, it is crucial to ensure a smooth and successful MOM verification process that avoids the most common verification errors, conducted by the right MOM-endorsed verification provider.
To identify a suitable and reputable background check provider, Singapore organisations need to compare the background check services and qualities that prospective vendor candidates offer. If done right, your procurement conversations with potential vendors should reveal any red flags that may cause your MOM verification process to fail.
Below are some key questions to ask as a starting point.
8 questions to ask before choosing a MOM verification provider
1. Are you officially MOM-endorsed?
For Employment Pass (EP) applications for overseas hires, it is absolutely non-negotiable to choose an MOM-approved screening provider. Since 1 September 2023, only 12 employment screening providers in Singapore have been approved by MOM to conduct background screening and verification of overseas candidates, including educational qualifications for EPs and other work passes. Hence, any verification report produced by an unaccredited vendor would be rejected on arrival.
2. Which universities do you have direct verification partnerships with?
For MOM-endorsed verification providers to confirm a candidate’s academic credentials, having direct verification partnerships with universities, particularly major ones, helps these providers to verify the person’s authenticity directly with the source. This enables faster turnaround times. For vendors, extracting information directly from the source also carries greater evidentiary weight with MOM than verification obtained through secondary sources, and increases the chance of successful verification.
3. How do you handle verifications outside your endorsed scope?
While MOM has given its endorsement to 12 background check providers in Singapore, this endorsement only covers a specific scope; in this case, academic verification for EPs.
While verification within this scope will be performed up to MOM’s high standards, the true measure of a vendor’s quality lies in assessing how meticulously they attend to other background checks outside of MOM’s endorsed scope. These checks may include criminal background checks, credit checks, employment history checks, and so on.
When choosing a verification partner, it is crucial for HR and compliance leaders in Singapore to consider whether the company will perform to a high standard of professionalism and compliance, even in unregulated areas. Check to make sure a prospective background check vendor can not only enunciate clearly what is and isn’t within endorsed scope but also make a clear distinction between their methodology and MOM’s requirements.
4. What is your average turnaround for each verification type?
In Singapore’s competitive hiring market, how long a company takes to get back to a candidate with an offer, or the next stage of an interview, can make or break the recruitment process. If an employment screening provider takes too long to turn an application around, it could inadvertently result in the candidate acquiring a negative impression of their prospective employer. This can lead to lost talent, with the candidate choosing to take a faster offer elsewhere instead.
Thus, it is important to pay attention to the turnaround times committed to by any MOM-endorsed verification provider in their service level agreements.
5. How do you communicate delays and status updates?
While employment screening providers should be judged by their core work of verifying a candidate’s background, building a trusted relationship with the company is just as important. Clear communication and approachability are key. A reassuring answer from the provider can open the door to a long and fulfilling collaboration. In contrast, companies who are less approachable and give vague, evasive, or unsatisfactory answers are best avoided.
6. How do you comply with PDPA and cross-border data transfers?
The compliance question is not merely a formality: it comes with real legal risk for employers. Under many countries’ data privacy laws – including Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) – should a vendor, in the role of a data intermediary, violate any data privacy laws in Singapore, the employer, as the data controller, is typically legally liable for any data breaches or protection failures that occur.
It is therefore crucial to verify that a prospective provider can demonstrate compliance and adhere to regulatory requirements. This will help you avoid indirect reputational damage and direct legal or financial penalties.
7. What happens to candidate data after the engagement ends?
Following the previous question, this data security question is also important. It is vital to ensure that your vendor complies with data regulations regarding the retention and disposal of a candidate’s personal data and information. Your Singapore employment screening provider should be able to give you a clear policy regarding data disposal that aligns with the requirements of the PDPA.
8. What is included in the quoted price?
Quoted price is an important question in any vendor procurement, not just for background check providers. You want to make sure that what is being quoted does not include any hidden or unnecessary costs or scope, and that the quote fully covers the scope of what you are requesting.
Red-flag answers to watch for
There are many kinds of red flags that should alert you to the unsuitability of a background check vendor in Singapore.
Fundamentally, any answers that avoid transparency or specificity by being vague or general should arouse suspicion. For example, when asking about data privacy, a provider must be able to assert that “we obtain candidate consent as part of our process” and show when and how that consent is captured.
Conversely, answers that are too smooth and confident, which either discount or do not acknowledge the potential for friction or limitation, are also suspicious. No verification process is the same, and unforeseen circumstances are common, such as edge cases where authoritative verification may be difficult.
How RMI can answer these questions
As one of the top MOM-endorsed background check providers in Singapore, RMI takes pride in answering these key verification questions to the satisfaction of hundreds of clients.
Our alternative, people-centric approach makes background verification less clinical and impersonal, ensuring that clients and candidates are treated with the utmost care and reassurance from start to finish. We also commit to a turnaround time of 15 days at most, without compromising on quality.
With a wide network of regional and local partnerships coupled with global expertise, RMI can navigate both overseas and local regulatory environments, and obtain accurate, authentic verification quickly and efficiently. We also keep candidate data protected through compliance with the ISO/IEC 27001:2022 information security standard.
We commit to delivering excellence to our clients and candidates by adopting proactive measures to address any roadblocks that appear. With RMI, companies in Singapore can enjoy peace of mind knowing their verification needs are in trusted hands. Get in touch with us today to find out more.